The Candy Shop War, Vol. 2: Arcade Catastrophe (6 page)

“Right.”

Summer spotted Nate and Trevor on the far side of the street, trying to look casual as they scanned the rooftops. She lifted her head a little and waved. Nate saw her and gave a small salute. He and Trevor mounted their bikes, then rode over to the Arcadeland parking lot. She watched them deposit their bikes at the large bike rack before disappearing inside the building.

Pigeon shifted beside her. “I keep trying to tell myself they got the dangerous job, not the fun one.”

“Are you believing it?”

“Not really.”

“Me neither,” Summer sighed. “But at least we had an excuse to climb a building. Nate was right that we’d be crazy to all go in together. This way, if something goes wrong, they can’t catch us all at once.”

“Think anything will happen?”

“Probably not. But better safe than sorry.”

Summer studied Arcadeland. It seemed popular. There were cars in the parking lot and plenty of bikes at the bike rack. Two of the batting cages were in use, and several groups roamed the miniature golf courses, putting on artificial turf surrounded by miniature monuments. She saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, the Sphinx, Big Ben, Mount Rushmore, and others that she recognized but couldn’t name.

Summer leaned toward Pigeon. “What’s the name of that building in Russia with the colorful, onion-shaped domes?”

“In the West we call it St. Basil’s Cathedral,” he replied. “There’s a rumor that the architect who designed it was blinded by Ivan the Terrible to prevent him from duplicating his efforts elsewhere.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

He shrugged. “I just like to read about history.”

As the minutes dragged by, Summer felt her patience wearing thin. People made their way around the miniature golf courses. A trickle of customers entered and exited the front doors.

Summer tried to spot the Battiato brothers. Supposedly they were close by, but she hadn’t seen them since leaving the buffet. She studied the parked vehicles in the area and scanned up and down the sidewalks, but she detected no sign of the beefy twins.

“What the . . . ?” Pigeon suddenly blurted.

“What?” Summer asked, glancing at him to see where he was looking.

“Do you see those two kids across the way?”

“Which kids?”

“The two near the batting cages, just outside the Arcadeland fence.”

“A boy and a girl.”

“Right.”

“What about them?”

“Well, I barely saw it, but when they came out from behind that building next to Arcadeland, they were like ten feet off the ground. They glided to a landing on the pavement.”

“Like they had Moon Rocks?”

“Or something.”

Summer studied them as best she could. The girl had longish brown hair and tan skin. The boy had messy blond hair. They were looking around as if to make sure they were unobserved. Summer was about to comment that they were acting suspicious when the two kids jumped over the Arcadeland fence with a single smooth leap. The side of the batting cages would have shielded them from onlookers inside Arcadeland. But Summer saw the furtive act perfectly.

“Arcadeland must be handing out magic candy,” Summer guessed.

“What do we do?” Pigeon asked.

“Those two probably know a lot about what’s going on here.”

“Do we go down there?”

Summer frowned. “We need information if we’re going to help John. We shouldn’t risk letting them get away without finding out more about them.”

Pigeon gave a nod. “Then we better hurry.”

*****

Nate paused beside Trevor after entering Arcadeland. He had never been inside such a vast arcade before. Beyond the tiled lobby he could see traditional standing video games, driving games, shooting games, plus diverse games where a player could win tickets.

“This place is big,” Trevor murmured.

“Let’s check it out,” Nate said.

For the first few minutes, Nate and Trevor roamed the aisles of games, surveying the different ways to spend tokens. Some of the shooting games looked really cool. One let two players hunt dinosaurs together. Another offered the chance to roam a zombie-infested mansion armed with machine guns. A third turned the player into the gunner atop an armored vehicle that prowled around a battlefield.

Trevor seemed extra interested in the racing games. You could ride a motorcycle that you turned by rocking it from side to side. A long row of car racing games used steering wheels to put the player in the driver’s seat. Most featured exotic courses. Some of them were apparently set in the future. One unusual racing game allowed the player to pedal a bike that powered a one-man airship.

Nate didn’t spend a lot of time on the traditional video games. There were some slick fighting games, and a few classic games like Gauntlet, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man. But he could play games like that at home.

Most of the arcade was devoted to games that allowed the player to win tickets. Nate found Skee-Ball, basketball, and Whac-A-Mole. Some of the games seemed like pure chance, where you spun a big prize wheel or pressed a button to drop a ball onto a spinning platform riddled with holes.

On one side of the arcade they found a coin-operated shooting gallery depicting a scene from the Old West, with lots of little targets spaced around the area. They paused to watch people shooting. One target made the mannequin at the piano start playing. Another made the spittoon rattle. A third made an owl flap its wings and spin its head around.

“Let’s get some tokens,” Trevor suggested.

Nate led the way to a token machine. He inserted a twenty, and coins came clinking out like he’d won a jackpot. “Is this enough for now?” Nate asked.

“Do one more for me,” Trevor said. “They want us to be thorough—that’ll take some money.”

Nate fed the machine a second twenty and let Trevor collect the tokens. While Trevor scooped them out, Nate scanned the room. There were people around, but the arcade wasn’t packed. He supposed it probably got more crowded in the evenings and on weekends.

“Where do you want to start?” Trevor asked.

“Too many choices—it’s hard to pick.”

“Do you want to win tickets?”

“I don’t know,” Nate said. “Let’s see what prizes they have.”

They wandered over to the redemption counter, where various items were on display alongside the quantity of tickets required to claim them. The prizes ranged from cheap little army men and gummy bracelets for 5 tickets up to sound systems and guitars for 15,000.

“This is such a rip-off,” Trevor said. “The cheap things are junk, and you could buy the cool stuff for so much less than it would cost to earn all those tickets.”

“Earning the tickets is supposed to be fun,” Nate said. “I think they have the prizes as sort of a bonus.”

Trevor folded his arms and leaned against the glass counter. “I don’t know. If I put in all the effort to win 10,000 tickets, I’d want something better than a neon clock.”

“You could get two mini foosball tables,” Nate pointed out.

“Exactly,” Trevor said. “How long do you think that mini foosball table would stay fun?”

“You can be like me, and just go for the bouncy balls. Let’s see . . . the little ones are 25 tickets, medium are 50, and the bigger ones are 100. Cheap
and
fun.”

“If you say so.”

“You’re welcome to give your tickets to me,” Nate said.

“I could probably find a prize if I had to,” Trevor hedged. “Maybe that glow-in-the-dark yo-yo.”

“Hours of fun,” Nate said. “Want to shoot some hoops?”

“We can shoot hoops for free,” Trevor mentioned. “At the park. At our school.”

“Right, but on a normal court it isn’t timed, the balls don’t automatically keep coming, nothing keeps score, and you don’t get tickets at the end. Besides, we’re not really paying for it.”

“Okay, I’m in.”

They walked over to the row of basketball shooting games against the wall. Most had mini basketballs. A couple at the end were larger, with full-sized balls and a longer distance to the hoop.

Only one person was currently playing—a skinny kid with dark hair who looked to be about their age. He was on one of the smaller machines. As the timer ticked down, he sank one ball after another, most of them swishes. After releasing each shot, he snatched another ball before the previous one had dropped. Taking no time to aim, he kept shooting with mechanical regularity. The infrequent missed shots didn’t rattle him, although occasionally an inbound shot would collide with a ball still bouncing on the rim.

For the last thirty seconds, the hoop slid farther away, awarding three points instead of two for each basket made. After the hoop retreated, the kid missed only twice even though he was still shooting about as fast as Nate could imagine. At the buzzer, his score was 105. The machine started expelling a long ribbon of tickets, which joined other strips of tickets coiled at his feet.

“That was amazing,” Nate said loudly.

The kid looked over. “I’ve been practicing.”

“Can you shoot like that every time?” Trevor asked.

The kid shrugged. “Mostly. You guys want to have a competition?”

Nate didn’t feel very eager. He doubted he could sink half as many baskets in the same amount of time. “What sort of competition?”

The kid smiled. “Whoever sinks the most baskets keeps all the tickets.” He looked down at the tangled ribbons of tickets by his feet.

“We don’t have any tickets,” Trevor said. “We might only earn a few.”

“Then you don’t have much to lose,” the kid replied.

“Sure,” Nate said, taking out a token.

Trevor claimed a machine on one side of the kid, Nate on the other. Nate and Trevor inserted their tokens. The kid swiped what looked like a credit card through a card reader above the token slot.

“What’s that?” Nate asked.

The kid held up the card. “If you’re going to play a lot, you can buy a card from the counter and use it instead of tokens.”

“Seems easier.”

“It is. You guys ready?”

“Ready,” Trevor said.

Nate punched the start button. Basketballs rolled his way. The hoop wasn’t too far away, but he missed his first shot. The second shot clanged off the rim. The third went in. He tried not to notice the kid beside him shooting balls twice as fast and hardly missing. Nate kept shooting, missing plenty.

Just as Nate started sinking shots with regularity, the hoop slid back for the three-point finale. Nate made only one shot at that distance. His final score was 27. The machine rewarded him by spitting out three tickets.

Nate looked over to see that Trevor had scored 33. The other kid had tallied 101. His machine was gushing tickets again.

“How many tickets are coming out?” Nate asked.

“You get fifty for breaking a hundred,” the kid replied. “The record today is at 114. I put it there. If you break that, the jackpot is 300. They reset the record to 80 every morning.”

“How many tickets do you have?” Nate asked.

“Right now, around eleven hundred. Plus your three. And his four.”

Nate tore off his three tickets and handed them over. “Why so many tickets?” he asked. “What are you saving up for?”

The kid suddenly looked a little shifty. “I don’t know. One of the big prizes, I guess.”

“Like what?” Trevor wondered. “The guitar?”

“Something like that,” the kid replied vaguely. “You guys want to try me again?”

“Why risk all your tickets?” Nate asked.

The kid shrugged. “It isn’t much of a risk, and I get a few extra. Plus I get bored shooting alone.”

“I’ll try again,” Nate said.

“Sure,” Trevor agreed.

Nate shot faster this time. He felt like he had a better feel for it. By the end he had scored 36. Trevor scored 41. The kid had 108.

Nate tore off his four tickets and handed them over.

“You’re not letting him steal your tickets?” asked a voice from behind.

Nate turned. A kid in a Giants cap stood beside a girl with dark hair. They looked about his age. Maybe a little older.

“I knew I’d probably lose,” Nate explained.

The hat kid laughed. “Definitely, not probably. Nobody beats Roman.”

Nate looked over. “Is that your name? I’m Nate.”

“Trevor,” Trevor added from the other side.

Roman nodded at them.

“How many are you up to?” the hat kid asked Roman.

“Low forties,” he replied.

“Low forties?” Trevor asked. “You have over a thousand tickets.”

“He means more than forty thousand,” the girl said.

“Forty
thousand?
” Nate exclaimed. “Are you compulsive or something? Like one of those gamblers who can’t quit?”

After glaring at the girl, the hat kid turned to Nate. “He’s not addicted. He’s just really good. Something you wouldn’t know about.”

“How good are you?” Nate shot back, feeling insulted. “You on the arcade basketball pro tour?”

“I’m better than you,” the hat kid replied. “Look, you should get lost, we need to talk to Roman.”

Nate knew he should be focused on reconnaissance, but the rudeness was too blatant to ignore. “How about you beat me at basketball first? One game. You on one side, Roman on the other.”

The hat kid chuckled. “I don’t need four tickets.”

“I have more than nineteen dollars in tokens. Whoever wins gets them along with my tickets. If I win, I get Roman’s tickets and whatever you can offer.”

The hat kid glanced at Roman, who shrugged.

“Okay,” the hat kid said. He produced a card like the one Roman was using. “There’s more than a hundred dollars in tokens on here. You beat me, you keep it. If Roman beats me, I’ll buy him lunch.”

“Deal,” Nate said, pulling out a stick of Peak Performance gum and putting it in his mouth.

“You in too?” the hat kid asked Trevor.

Trevor raised both hands. “I’ll just watch.”

The hat kid walked to the game beside Nate and swiped his card.

“What’s your name?” Nate asked.

“Chris,” he said, “but you can call me daddy.”

“We’ll see,” Nate said, inserting a token.

“You guys ready?” Roman asked.

They all hit their start buttons.

Nate grabbed his first ball. The hoop looked enormous, and incredibly close. He began shooting rapidly, never bobbling when he grabbed a new ball, never waiting for the previous shot to drop before grabbing another. He realized he could do it faster if he alternated shots between his left and right hand, but decided that his unending string of swishes was conspicuous enough.